The British Journal of Psychiatry (2003) 183: A2
© 2003 The Royal College of Psychiatrists
Psychiatry in pictures
ROBERT HOWARD
Do you have an image, preferably accompanied by 100 to 200 words of
explanatory text, that you think would be suitable for Psychiatry in Pictures?
Submissions are very welcome and should be sent direct to Professor Robert
Howard, Box 070, Institute of Psychiatry, London SE5 8AF, UK.
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Miss Theodora Weston (photograph taken 30 August 1895)
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Between the mid-1880s and 1890s, photographs were taken of over 300 Bethlem
patients by hospital staff. Resident medical students, clinical assistants and
attendants took the pictures during the course of their work around the
hospital. Prints of many of the photographs were included in an album as well
as pasted into patients’ individual medical records. Viewing the
photographs together with the corresponding case histories is a moving
experience and opens a window onto the lives of otherwise forgotten
individuals. Theodora Weston, aged 23, was admitted on 28 July 1894. The
doctor’s certificate completed by Dr Thomas Shawe, Medical
Superintendent of the London County Council Asylum at Banstead, outlined the
reasons for her admission as follows: ‘She is in a state of dementia and
will scarcely reply to my questions. She says however that she asked if her
food at dinner today was poisoned. The aspect yesterday when I saw her was one
of suspicion and her manner very reticent. I consider her dangerous to
herself. She is restless and wanders about. I am informed by her sister, Miss
Ruth Weston, that she has hallucinations, fancying that people are outside to
whom she makes signals and with whom she converses. That she required the
windows to be closed to prevent people coming in to seduce her. Also that she
has tried to leave the house early to go and meet people that she could hear
whistling to her. That she refuses food under the idea that it is
poisoned’. In the weeks that followed admission, she refused food and
was fed through a nasal tube but she became increasingly withdrawn so that she
was described as ‘now quite demented’ in her case notes in May
1895. She was discharged ‘uncured’ to a private lunatic house in
Peckham. In the photograph, taken around the time of her discharge, she is
wearing the hospital’s ‘strong clothing’ which was difficult
to remove without assistance or to tear. Photographs and case histories of
over 60 similar cases can be found in Presumed Curable: An Illustrated
Casebook of Victorian Psychiatric Patients in Bethlem Hospital by Colin
Gale and Robert Howard (Petersfield: Wrightson Biomedical, 2003). The original
photographs are in the Bethlem Royal Hospital Archives and Museum.
